1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imprinting apparatus and an imprinting method for transferring a pattern of a mold to a resin coated on a substrate.
2. Description of the Related Art
An imprinting technique refers to a technique to form a pattern on a resin coated on a substrate such as a silicon wafer, a glass plate or the like by transferring the pattern formed on a mold to the resin. More specifically, the mold having the pattern is pressed against the resin coated on the substrate, and, while maintaining this state, the resin is cured thereby forming the pattern in the resin.
One of imprinting techniques practically used today is that using a photocuring process. In the photocuring method, a photocuring resin is coated on a substrate, and a mold having a pattern is pressed against the substrate via the resin. While maintaining the state in which the mold is pressed against the substrate, the resin is illuminated with light such as ultraviolet light or the like to cure the resin. Thereafter, the mold is removed from the resin. The pattern remains in the resin on the substrate.
To form a pattern in a plurality of shot areas using the imprinting technique, it is known to perform the coating of resin and the transferring of the pattern repeatedly for the plurality of shot areas on the substrate on a one-by-one basis (Japanese Patent No. 4185941).
To transfer the pattern to a particular shot area using the conventional imprinting technique described above, first, the substrate is moved such that the shot area comes to a coating position at which the coating is to be performed by a coating unit. The coating unit is a unit configured to coat resin on the substrate. After the coating of resin is completed, the substrate is moved such that the shot area coated with the resin comes to a transfer position at which the pattern of the mold held by a mold head is to be transferred to the shot area, and the transferring of the pattern is performed. In the imprinting apparatus designed to perform the above-described process, the coating unit for coating resin and the mold head that is movable up and down to transfer the pattern are disposed such that they are located in a horizontal line. To form the pattern in a plurality of shot areas on the substrate, it is necessary to move the substrate many times such that each shot area is moved between the coating position and the pattern transferring position. The time spent to perform this movement cannot be neglected to improve the throughput of the imprinting apparatus. That is, the movement of the substrate is one of significant factors that determine the throughput of the imprinting apparatus.